Choosing an Embedded OS for Sustainability?

vivekb asks: "I work for a small start-up that's building its first commercial product. Because cost is less of an issue than development time, we've decided to make the brains out of an ETX computer with some sort of (non-realtime) operating system. Based on initial costs of tools and estimated license fees, the cheapest OS's I've found are Windows CE and several offerings of Linux. The big question that I can't answer is, 'How much will these platforms cost in sustaining activities?' In three years, when we're fixing bugs or applying patches, how much will we be paying vendors and how much will we be spending on internal developers? When the Linux kernel is at version 3.0 and our device is still running 2.6 -- or when CE reaches .INFO and we're still at .NET -- will support even be available? If anyone has past experience picking an embedded OS for a screen-and-button based electronic device, what did you learn to stick with or avoid?"

Hire An Expert

[Some guy named Chris]

I'm guessing nobody in your organization has ever developed an embedded app, or you would have industry contacts, real world experience, and better things to do than post this to "Ask Slashdot".

Re:Nucleus from Mentor Graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

As the last AC said it. List your needs (include your boss' needs too - as secondary to begin with ;-P ). Then search for an embeddable OSes that most closely meets your needs. After the list has narrowed down to four or five OSes, apply your boss' needs to limit the list to two or three AT MOST.

You really can't go wrong with Linux, but that can not be said for all other OSes, though some come close.

You can always fall back to the most used OS in the world ... CP/M! It is the Mother and Father of Microsofts OSes after all. Yeah, its OLD and but there are versions that can do a lot more than what most people would believe.

QNX, RTOS, PDOS, BOSS, etc. all have their strong points as well. So go out there and have fun searching for the OS that's best for your project!

How about DOS?

[Ritchie70]

Semi-serious, semi-not. DOS runs a lot of embedded systems, because it gives some really basic hardware support (file systems and booting, really) but still lets you get direct to the hardware. My employer has somewhere around 65,000 MS-DOS systems in the field.